I started out to comment on a grievous incident that happened at Church but I could not get onto "Blogger" this morning. So, I'll get to my diatribe on altar girls now...Altar girls are wrong. Yes, it's my opinion. However, it is an opinion shared by many--even women--in the Church.
But, no, serving at the altar has no bearing on the call to priesthood, right? The lady in front of me thanked the girl 'priest' behind me for serving for her son, who doesn't want to serve anymore. She said, "It must be a [high school] junior thing." NO!! It is a GIRL thing. Boys simply do not want to do something once it becomes a girl thing. Why don't you see many boys named Laurie, or Kim, or Jamey anymore? Because they are now girl names. BTW, you do know that Bambi was a stag, right??? Boys do not want to serve any more once it becomes a girls' job. Teenage boys either don't want to do a girl's job or they become attracted to the teenage girls serving at the altar with them. Either way, the Church loses.
After writing this far, I did read this which contained some of the very things I just stated.
"The 1994 letter [from the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Sacraments] states: "It will always be very appropriate to follow the noble tradition of having boys serve at the altar. As is well known, this has led to a reassuring development of priestly vocations. Thus the obligation to support such groups of altar boys will always continue."
and:
"Therefore the Holy See's recommendation is to retain as far as possible the custom of having only boys as servers. But it leaves to the bishop the choice of permitting women and girls for a good reason and to the pastor of each parish the decision as to whether to act on the bishop's permission.
"It is important not to focus this debate using political categories such as rights, equality, discrimination, etc., which only serves to fog the issue. We are dealing with the privilege of serving in an act of worship to which nobody has any inherent rights."
"Among the pastoral factors to be weighed is the obvious yet often forgotten fact that boys and girls are different and require different motivational and formative methods.
"This difference means that both boys and girls usually go through a stage when they tend to avoid common activities."
"Preteen boys in particular are very attracted to activities that cater especially for them, and they tend to reject sharing activities with girls."
"They also tend to have a greater need for such structured activities than girls who are usually more mature and responsible at this stage of life.
As a result, some parishes have found that the introduction of girl servers has led to a sharp drop-off of boys offering to serve. Once the boys have left and enter the years of puberty, it is difficult to bring them back.
"Some pastors say this phenomenon is less marked where serving at Mass forms part of a wider Catholic structure, such as a school, or when siblings serve together.
"It is also true that groups of boy servers have fostered vocations to the priesthood. But to be fair, this usually happens within a broader culture of openness to a vocation in which other elements come into play, such as the example and spiritual guidance given by good priests, and family support.
"If, for example, a long-established program of boy servers has proved successful in promoting vocations or has been useful in helping boys avoid bad company and maintain the state of grace, then the good of souls obliges pastors to weigh heavily the spiritual risks involved in abandoning it."
"When girls do serve, it is probably best to aim for a mixture of boys and girls — if only to avoid giving the impression to the congregation that Catholicism is above all a female activity...."
Some other articles on Altar girls can be read here, here, here, and here.
